TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. is soliciting ideas from investment advisors, college students and technology companies to help the online brokerage firm come up with new tools, such as those that incorporate artificial intelligence and data analytics, that could be integrated into its software, said CIO Vijay Sankaran.

To that end, the company on Monday launched a competition that will award $100,000 total to three innovators who develop technology that can improve the experience for the more than 6,000 independent registered investment advisors that use its software, as well as their clients.

“Things like bots, conversational commerce and more efficient ways of manipulating data could be brought to life in the platform,” Mr. Sankaran said.

Advisors already use TD Ameritrade’s investment management software to manage accounts on behalf of their clients and to execute financial transactions. They also use portfolio management, customer-relationship management, and other tools from about 140 technology vendors that connect their services to the software through application programming interfaces, or APIs.

Too often, companies try to tackle product innovation without fully understanding the customers’ needs, which is why TD Ameritrade decided to look outside the company to increase its chances of attracting good ideas, said Mr. Sankaran, who became CIO of TD Ameritrade in early 2016. The competition is open to the “wisdom of crowds” instead of just its own in-house software developers, he said.

“We’re tapping into the creative juices of this broad community, (which) for us is going to be an awesome opportunity to learn a lot more about what our key clients think and what their ideas are,” he said.

This is the brokerage’s first competition of its kind targeted at coming up with new ideas for registered investment advisors. The finalists will be announced in October.

About 30% of advisors said they invested more in technology in 2017 than legal and compliance services and marketing services, according to a TD Ameritrade survey of 300 registered investment advisors.

The company will be judging ideas based in part on how much they help improve the experience for the advisors and investor clients — particularly younger, millennial-aged clients, Mr. Sankaran said.

For example, an AI-powered chatbot or virtual assistant could help answer client questions or easily perform transactions during hours when advisors are not available, said Jim Dario, managing director of institutional product management and development. Such technologies are already being used in other ways by millennials, he said.

“We want to make sure that (advisors) are embracing the technology they need to service that next-generation investor,” Mr. Dario said.